Who’d have ever thought that a psychopathic prostitute-killing pig farmer from B.C. would be the face behind a major social reform? But so it is with the criminal laws surrounding Canada’s prostitution industry, struck down in large part on Monday by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

“The evidence in the record about the violence faced by street prostitutes across Canada is, in a word, overwhelming,” said one judge. “One does not need to conjure up the face of Robert Pickton to know that this is true.”

Ah, but it helps, doesn’t it? Most of us ignore the plight of street prostitutes for the same reason we ignore the plight of squalid native communities: out of sight, out of mind. It is only when some monstrous tragedy jumps out of these underworlds — tweeners gone glue-sniffing, or the frozen toddlers in Yellow Quill, in the case of natives; a serial killer and sadist in the case of prostitutes — that anyone bothers paying attention.

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The Ontario case of Canada v. Bedford gets at the hypocritical heart of our prostitution laws. On the one hand, paying cash for sex is perfectly legal — a nod to the universal nature of retail sex across all cultures and all historical eras. Yet in practice, the trade is effectively illegal because of laws that prohibit the penumbra of activities surrounding the transaction — including “hey there, sailor” solicitation, and the organization of secure and profitable brothels. This means that every prostitute inevitably lives on the wrong side of the law, since there is always something about her trade that comprises an arrestable offence.

These features of the Canadian prostitution industry — which the Ontario Court of Appeal weighed under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — make the prostitute vulnerable to brutalization, rape and outright murder in a variety of ways.

First, they compress, to mere seconds, the time in which a prostitute must decide whether to jump into a prospective client’s car — since the act of commercial interaction turns the vehicle into a crime scene. For too many prostitutes, the closing of the passenger-side car door begins their life as a butcher’s prisoner.

Second, it removes the prostitute’s ability to ensure her security and resolve commercial disputes through the means that you and I take for granted: police and courts. And so they use the same means of conflict-resolution used by the mafia and biker gangs: hired thugs, which is to say, pimps.

By opting out of the legal world, prostitutes effectively become invisible people — like the homeless (the other popular target, no coincidence, of serial killers). When murdered and buried, they leave no paper trail, only bones. The few people who miss them — clients, fellow prostitutes, pimps — have little inducement to go to police. Indeed, one of the most chilling facts that came out of the Pickton tragedy was how widely known the unfolding massacre had been for years among many streetwalkers.

In addressing all this, the Ontario Court of Appeal tried to strike a balance. The ban on brothels (“bawdy houses”) rightly has been struck down (though application of the judgment has been suspended for 12 months in order to give Parliament a chance to redraft the law in question). The law against “living on the avails” of prostitution has been struck down — but only for “non-exploitative” commercial relationships (though God knows how they will do case-by-case fact-finding on that one — especially since many pimps take prostitutes as girlfriends, and eliciting credible testimony from the latter will be almost impossible. I suspect it will simply be the case that female madames get a free passs and male pimps are presumptively thrown in the slammer).

The court’s judgment is written in a way so as to mute calls of “judicial activism.” “While we have concluded that some aspects of the current legislative scheme governing prostitution are unconstitutional,” the majority wrote, “it remains open to Parliament to respond with new legislation that complies with the requirements of the Charter.” And it is in this spirit that the court ruled with the government on the issue of solicitation — meaning that Monday’s judgment will do lots to help brothel-based prostitutes, but relatively little for those on the street. Still, I’d say that the court hit the right balance.

Brothels should be legal in this country, which is the first step in making them safe. On street prostitution, however, the court was correct to say that judges must respect the state’s legitimate objective in preventing poor neighbourhoods from being turned into open-air sex markets. It’s one thing for judges and editorial-board libertarians to champion the laissez-faire rights of sex-trade workers. But I suspect I’d have a different view if I actually lived, with my family, in the areas where this stuff happens. It’s a complex problem, and the judges showed appropriate humility in recognizing that they can’t make it go away with the wave of their hands.

What Canada really needs — as the Ontario Court of Appeal majority hints — is for Parliament to rip up the existing system of laws, which is based on centuries-old common law concepts, and start afresh.

It is a moral and humanitarian tragedy that many Canadian women feel compelled to sell their bodies on the street. Our prostitution laws should be written so as to encourage as many of them as possible to find new lives, or at least move to safer, indoor, legal brothels. Failing that, we should do our best to ensure that we can at least keep those street-sold bodies out of a murderer’s backyard.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.